Mercury Rises (18 page)

As he spoke, a giant, beautiful parrot alighted on his shoulder. "Noah!" warbled the bird. "I am the LORD your God. The flood is over! Land the boat already! You want a cracker? That's a good girl. Tell him, just like that. Don't forget the first part. I am the LORD your God!"

"Dammit, Japheth," said Noah. "What did I tell you about teaching the parrot to blaspheme?"

Japheth held up his hands innocently. "But I didn't---"

"That's enough out of you, parrot! Back to the boat!"

The parrot flew off dejectedly.

"As I was saying," Noah continued, "God is wiping out humanity because of their wicked violent ways. We're going to be the sole survivors. Gotta stay on the boat until it's over."

"Hmmm," said Mercury, taking this in. "So just to be clear, God abhors violence so much that He decided to drown millions of people in a horrific flood, is that it?"

"Yep," said Noah.

"Well, it's nice He thought to save the animals," said Mercury. "Say, you don't happen to have any extra food on board, do you?"

"Sorry, man," said Noah. "Brought just enough for the animals. I finally increased our rations the other day when the rain stopped. My kids have literally been at each other's throats."

As if on cue, there was a scream from the boat. "Dad!" called a shrill voice from somewhere below deck. "Shem is trying to cut me with a carving knife again!"

Noah turned back to the boat. "Shem!" he hollered, "What did I tell you about eating Ham?"

The caterwauling on the boat seemed to stop. Noah turned back to Mercury. "I'm sorry, I should get back to the boat. My kids can be real assholes sometimes. No offense, Japheth."

Japheth forced a smile.

"Maybe we could trade with you for some food," Mercury said. "We'd kill for a sheep or two."

"No way," said Noah. "I can't spare any sheep. Maybe some grain. What do you have to trade?"

"Well," said Mercury. "We've got plenty of bricks. Possibly some ore."

"Bricks?" snorted Noah. "I'm living on a boat, man. What would I need bricks for? I might settle for some wood."

"No wood," said Mercury. "Sorry."

"Then I guess we have nothing to talk about," said Noah.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mercury noticed Nabu and one of his men very quietly pushing the rowboat off the shore. Nabu, catching his glance, put his finger to his lips, and then cocked his head toward the boat and made an eating motion.

Noah made to turn back toward the rowboat.

"Wait!" cried Mercury. "I forgot! There's something you need to see!"

Noah eyed him skeptically.

"Like what?" said Japheth.

"Snipe!" Mercury announced. "Two of them!"

"What's a snipe?" asked Noah.

"Why," Mercury replied in mock disbelief, "you've never seen a snipe? They're great, beautiful, flightless birds. Quite a sight to see, although between you and me, not the brightest fowl around. I'm a bit surprised that any of them survived the flood this long. My goodness, those could be the last two snipe on earth! Think of that! But as you say, you've got things to do. Those monkey cages aren't going to clean themselves."

Noah and Japheth exchanged glances. "We may have a few minutes," said Noah.

Nabu and his partner had hopped onto the boat and were paddling stealthily out to the ark.

"Great!" exclaimed Mercury. "They're just over here." He marched up the hillside with Noah, Japheth, and the other men in tow. As they walked, Mercury continued to express astonishment that they had never seen a snipe, going into great detail about the snipe's gorgeous plumage and its spectacular and often suicidal mating rituals. By the time they had reached the crest of the hill, Noah and Japheth were jittery with excitement. To think, they had taken the
Rainbow Warrior
to sea without a pair of snipe!

"OK, the snipe were in that grove of trees down there," said Mercury. "We'll need to split up. Noah and Japheth, you take your men around to the left and wait. The rest of us will flush them out from the right. Let's do this!"

Noah and Japheth took off excitedly to the left. When they were out of sight, Mercury led the men back the way they had come. Nabu and his partner were furiously paddling the rowboat back to shore. On the deck of the ark, several people were screaming curses at them. The rowboat was stacked high with sacks of food.

"Nice work, Nabu!" Mercury exclaimed. "OK, everybody in the rowboat."

The men did as they were instructed. The boat was so weighed down that its lip barely protruded from the water.

"Hey," said Mercury, examining the contents of the rowboat. "What's this?" The carcass of an animal, the size of a large sheep, lay nestled among the sacks. A single horn protruded from its forehead.

"Dwarf unicorn," said Nabu proudly. "They're good eatin.' They had two of them on the boat, so I figured they could spare one."

"Good thinking," replied Mercury.

They pushed off from the shore as Noah and Japheth bounded over the ridge. "You sons of bitches!" Noah howled. "Come back here with my boat!"

But the rowboat was already too far out to be caught. While the men paddled, Mercury lay back in the boat and relaxed. So God had sent the flood to wipe out all the wickedness on the Earth, had He? Well, that was one possibility.

TWENTY-ONE

Christine awoke in what appeared to be a hospital bed. The clock on the nightstand next to the bed said 7:36 a.m. The oversized gown she was wearing read
Property of Nairobi Medical Center.
An oxygen mask was strapped to her face. Her right ankle was wrapped in a bandage and suspended several inches off the bed.

She pulled off the mask, brushing a cloud of dust from her hair in the process. Her arms and legs were scraped and bruised, but she seemed to have avoided major injury. She tried to sit up but was hit by a combination of pain and déjà vu that forced her to lie down again. Add lightning and volcanic eruption to my list of miraculous survivals, she thought. She half expected Harry Giddings to call and tell her to fly back to Los Angeles. The only thing that was missing in this little reenactment of her Israel experience was the metallic briefcase she had been given by General Isaakson.

This line of thought prompted another panicked realization: she had no idea where the glass apple was. If she was right about it, the apple was potentially even more dangerous than the Attaché Case of War. It wasn't something she wanted falling into the wrong hands. She looked frantically about the room before seeing the apple resting innocuously on a window ledge. How nice, she thought. A piece of decorative tchotchke with the destructive power of a small nuclear device. She would have to get the apple out of here and somewhere safe as soon as she could. Somewhere like the inside of a mountain in the middle of the Kenyan wilderness, for example. She shook her head at her stupidity. Why hadn't she just left the damn thing where it was?

As she pondered this, the door to her room opened. It was Horace Finch, looking only slightly less banged up than she. He was carrying a vase containing an enormous bouquet of flowers.

"Hey, you're awake!" he exclaimed. "Here, these are for you." He set the vase down on a small table between Christine and the window. He went on, "I wasn't sure either of us was going to survive the local medical care. I pulled some strings and got you a private room and a doctor with a medical degree from UCLA. He's a morphine addict with a history of credit card fraud, but beggars can't be choosers."

"You pulled strings? What string do you have access to in the Nairobi Medical Center?"

"Well, technically I offered to buy them a helicopter. They wanted mine, but I'm rather fond of her, so I told them I'd order one more suited to their needs."

"You have a helicopter?"

"Of course," Finch replied. "How do you think we got here? Once I managed to get us shielded under a boulder, I called my pilot back at Eden Two. He got to Mbutuokoti in twenty minutes. He dropped the rescue harness, I strapped you in, and we were off. Half an hour later we were in Nairobi."

"Being an eccentric billionaire has its advantages, I suppose," said Christine.

Finch nodded absentmindedly and walked to the window. "Nice view," he said. "They told me this was the best room in the hospital. Not that that's saying much. I've been to Taco Bells with better hygiene procedures."

He turned to face her again. "By the way, I didn't mention the thing with the goat and the thunderstorm and the volcano. No point in complicating matters with absurd, non-medically-relevant details. I told them you were in a spelunking accident."

"Ooh, kinky," replied Christine.

Finch looked at her uncomprehendingly, and then shook his head, evidently deciding it was better not to ask. "Anyway, get some rest," he said. "I've got to make some phone calls, but I'll be back later."

Christine nodded and Finch left the room. She lay back in bed and closed her eyes. She had almost drifted back to sleep when she heard a muffled
whup-whup-whup
in the distance. A helicopter, she thought. She sat up, unhooked her ankle from the sling, and hopped awkwardly to the window just in time to see a bright yellow helicopter with the Finch logo emblazoned on the side disappearing into the sunrise.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered. "Where does he think he's going?" And then she realized what had happened. She looked down at the empty windowsill, which had been obscured from her view by the flowers. The glass apple was gone.

TWENTY-TWO

Eddie's meeting with the lovely but demanding Wanda Kwan went better than he expected, which wasn't saying much. He assured her that the manuscript was coming along perfectly well, but when pressed for details, all he could muster were some vague promises about water rights and incest. Wanda seemed a bit troubled by this dark turn in what was ostensibly a series of adolescent fantasy books, but she brightened when he promised her six explosions, seven outfit changes, three chapters taking place at the Charlie Nyx Travel Plaza and Family Fun Place, and no mention of the setting of the six previous books.

The fact was that Eddie would have promised to write the entire book in Pig Latin to get out from under the piercing gaze of Ms. Kwan. At this point he was fairly certain he wasn't going to be able to deliver anything, so why not promise them the moon? Actually, that wasn't a bad idea, he thought. Maybe I'll tell them the climax of the book takes place on the moon. They'll love that.

Driving back to the hotel from the Beacon building, he spotted the Buena Vista Mall just off the freeway and, on a whim, exited and pulled into the parking lot of the massive shopping complex. If there had once been a cemetery here, there was no indication of it now. Had Cody been screwing with him?

Wandering around the mall parking lot, he questioned several shoppers before finding an elderly woman who remembered the cemetery. Her husband had died of a stroke some twenty years earlier and rested in peace for over a decade before being moved to Fullerton to make room for a Burger Giant. Eddie thanked her, offered his condolences, and headed toward the Burger Giant, which was adjacent to Bed, Bath & Beyond. If Cody was telling the truth, then her father's grave was around here, somewhere.

There was no indication of any grave marker, just acres of concrete and bland stucco-and-concrete-block buildings. The complex housing Bed, Bath & Beyond and Burger Giant was a long, narrow stretch of stores. Eddie walked around the entire structure and found nothing indicating the presence of a gravesite. He circumnavigated the structure once more, this time looking for any subtle markings on the pavement, thinking that perhaps they had simply paved over top of the grave. But if there really was a human being buried under the parking lot, somebody would have left a marker of some kind, wouldn't they? And Cody had definitely said that her father had a tombstone. Of course, she didn't say whether her father's tombstone had been removed along with the rest of them. He found nothing.

Standing at the rear of the structure near the service entrances, he appraised it once more and noticed something a bit odd. Most of the building was covered by a flat roof, with eaves that extended some three feet past the stucco walls. But near the center of the structure was a section, maybe fifty feet long, that appeared to have no roof. Some sort of open-air courtyard?

A single door presented itself in this section of the building. Eddie approached it and looked around to see if anyone was watching. The area was deserted except for a couple of men unloading some boxes a hundred or so yards away. They seemed to take no notice of him.

The door was locked, but this presented no difficulty for Eddie, as the lock's tumblers miraculously decided to line up just as he turned the handle. He pulled the door open and slipped through.

Inside was one of the strangest things Eddie had ever seen, and having been around for several thousand years, that was saying something. It was, quite simply, a gravesite. Ensconced within this featureless strip mall was a miniature park, covered by a lush, well-manicured lawn. Directly in the center of the lawn was a small wooden gazebo that rested on a granite base about three feet high. Engraved on the base, facing the door Eddie had just entered, were the words:

COLIN LANG

LAID TO REST APRIL 29, 1993

PANTON IN SUUS VICIS

"Well," said Eddie. "It appears I've found the Beyond department."

He approached the gazebo and stood for a moment, staring at the inscription. "Hello, Mr. Lang," he said to the unresponsive stone. "Nice to make your acquaintance. Figures that the one human being with whom I have something in common would be dead."

As an angel, Eddie had a hard time wrapping his brain around the concept of mortality. How could a person
be
one moment, and then
not be
the next? Presumably their souls continued on after death in some way, but in all his centuries he had never bumped into one on any of the Heavenly planes. As far as anyone could tell, the man named Colin Lang had simply ceased to exist, while his temporal remains rotted under a suburban strip mall. Eddie felt a bit let down. He wasn't sure what he had hoped to find, but there were clearly no answers here---about the Charlie Nyx manuscript or anything else.